Virtual Infidelity

Hello, my name is Jennys Willful and I’m an… oops, wrong meeting.

Hello. My SL name is etc, but reality knows me as Jenny Swallows – and yes, that is my real name, so keep the wisecracks to yourselves, please. Unless you’ve thought of one I haven’t already heard. By day, in rl, I’m a published erotic author and librarian (no, the two are not related), by night and whenever else I can get onto SL, I’m a dancer and trainer at Dark Side; and, by both day and night, my volunteer work as a relationships councilor for various local (rl) organizations set me up in ways I never imagined for a life inside SL. Or is it the other way around?

We speak a lot about relationships in SL, but we are also aware that (with the obvious exception of when they spill into rl), that the relationship is solely with whatever aspect of your partner’s personality they care to show. With the key word being “solely.”

An owner who is in a loving and committed relationship with her/his slave, in which more secrets and dreams have been shared than with any rl counterpart (for that is another attraction of SL – you really can say what you think), might not dream that the slave is leading an equally committed relationship as the owner of another slave, in the guise of a well-disguised alt. But it happens, and probably a lot more than any of us – even the suspicious ones among us – realize. For, short of monitoring your online playmate’s online existence 24/7, you have no way of knowing, and in any case, is it even our concern?

In some ways, it is. You enter into an SL relationship in the belief that what you tell and are told comes from the heart, at least within the parameters of the game.

No, when the girl you met last Saturday tells you that she is happier than she has ever been in her entire life, and loves you from the bottom of her heart, your rl self probably takes her words with a pinch of salt.

When the guy you’ve been seeing for the last month suddenly brings out the anal hook and asks you to impale his ass, you know that he is more likely to be exercising his curiosity, than reliving the last seventeen times it happened in rl.

At the same time, however, some things must be taken at face value, for otherwise the entire SL experience is reduced to a bizarre game of charades. Her cries of genuine surprise and delight the first time you drip hot wax on her nipples suggest to you that this is indeed a brand new sensation. His insistence that meeting you has been a truly life changing experience should be more than hollow platitude, especially if he can back it up with rl examples.

We accept that much of what we see and hear in SL is role-playing, but some truths are more sacred than others, and the thought that those same truths might well have been uttered by the same person, through a different avatar, just fifteen minutes ago, could be seen to cross that boundary.

At the same time, however, how much of your own personality is truly revealed to your partner? Most of us, probably, would say “all of it” – or, at least, as much as is necessary to allow you the immersion you need to enjoy the game. We do not lightly use words such as “love,” “devotion,” and “please do me again with the cactus.” But we would be fooling ourselves if we said that, because something is always held back, just as it is in rl. The Master who fantasizes about being a mernaid. The tiny who wants to be an amazon. The dancer who dreams of being a soldier.

So, what do we do? We create an alt and live out those fantasies through it – and we don’t even consider it to be cheating because we are exercising a completely different aspect of our personality, for completely different ends. They become, in effect, two completely different people operating out of the same rl body, and provoking completely different responses and emotions in that body.

Which is fine until we screw up – completely forgetting which av you signed on as, and loudly blaming the Lindens because none of your landmarks are there. Buying yourself in a slave auction, because you can’t bear to be left unsold. And asking yourself how you are feeling is a total no-no, even in the most relaxed rl situation. Doing so when your only means of explanation are fast typing skills and a slice of self-deprecation (“it’s okay, last week I was talking to the wallpaper”) is… well, it’s not fatal.

But it does leave your partner with their first unanswered question – which, once the computers have been shut down – can rapidly multiply into a host of others. And where questions are asked, answers quickly follow, and in the wee small hours of the night, you can bet that those answers are not the most considered ones.

Where are we going here? For now, nowhere. I intend continuing to follow this line of thought in future postings, but I hope first to open it up for discussion here. Is your alt a cheating scumbag? Or is your partner just being paranoid? Answers in the comment box below, please.